Echo Icons Guidelines Discussion: Icon Sizes

[Martin Sourada]

hi,

another thing do discuss in Echo Icons Guidelines [1] are the sizes of
icons [2] that will be in the package. So I propose three basic sizes
and one optional size, following the tango example [3]:

1. Extra Small (16x16)
2. Small
 a) 22x22
 b) 24x24
3. Medium (32x32, optional)
4. Large (48x48)

Because of the usage of these sizes, 22x22 variant is a must for all
action icons, all applications icons and all categories action (by
default they are in buttons and in gnome menus in this size), 24x24 is a
must for all action icons (they are usually in gtk toolbars), 16x16 is a
must for places icons, status icons, action icons, devices icons and
mimetypes icons (these are usually in nautilus and open/save dialogs).
The 48x48 variant is a must for everything that could be displayed in
nautilus, because it's default rendering size there, so mimetypes,
emblems, places, devices, or applications; also some of the icons from
other categories sometimes appear in this size, e.g. the shutdown or
suspend (in the shutdown/suspend dialogs).

The optional, 32x32, size is used in Windows (which is probably not our
target desktop) and sometimes it could appear in notification area (if
the panel is big enough). They usually look nice if rendered directly
from the scalable variant.

The scalable icons, IMHO, need to look at 48x48 precisely the same as
48x48 pngs, should be good looking up to 256x256 and down to 24x24 sizes
and their default size must be 48x48. They must be available for all
icons that has a png version and must not contain the illustrator
garbage (layers with display:none and previews, or what the images
inside the svgs are).

I hope I didn't missed something, here is the assorted list of the
must-haves for each category:

Actions - 16x16, 22x22, 24x24, (48x48)
Animations - all sizes, smaller (<=24x24) more needed
Applications - 22x22, 48x48
Categories - 22x22, 48x48
Devices - 16x16, 48x48
Emblems - 48x48
Emotes - 16x16, 24x24 or 22x22
International - these are country flags, so all
Mime Types - 16x16, 48x48
Places - 16x16, 48x48
Status - 16x16, 22x22 or 24x24, 48x48

Note 1: Icons that have 22x22 variant can be easily extended - you can
make a 24x24 just by adding one pixel to each side of the icon (can be
done in gimp, or maybe even more automatically). This should be
preferred to not making 24x24 at all. Also, I would highly encourage to
make 22x22 versions instead of 24x24 as the 24x24 variants are present
only for compatibility reasons, all desktops are switching to 22x22.

Note 2: Emblems, as they are now, seem to be too big. I would therefore
suggest to make them smaller. The icon size would be same, only the
emblem would be half sized, or a slightly bigger, and centred on the
canvas. I noticed this approach in bluecurve icons, though the icon
(with the canvas) sizes are 36x36 for 48x48 icons there, but noted as
48x48 in index.theme... 

Thanks for your comments,
Martin

References:
[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MartinSourada/EchoIconThemeGuidelinesDRAFT
[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MartinSourada/EchoIconThemeGuidelinesDRAFT#head-a08e7feda9af6ee810eb1cb61245bc39382f0cc0
[3] http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines#Sizes
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